Player Features and Ideas Discussion

An afk cloaker is not a single char wasting his time in EVE. It's an active player putting his cloaky alt in a 0.0 system where the enemy or just a neutral 0.0 corp is running missions or plexes. Typically it's a nullified t3 with probes, dampeners for a fast kill, loot and cloak again.

The cloaker never will engage PvP ships and just picking up the juicy, easy to kill PvE targets which can't really defend themselves.

And here we talk about the main issue with afk cloaking. While one single char is taking control over a whole system and other player's PvE activities (who are usually PvPers but you can't run missions in a decent PvP ship) by simply staying afk he is running another char and not caring if nothing happens on the other screen. The result is that noone can hunt the cloaked t3 down while the cloaker is taking the random chance to catch some ships in a mission or plex. And sooner or later it will happen. Two juicy kills in a week are enough at the end. There is no pressure and real threat for him. From my experience you can have the best standing fleet but you still lose ships because the afk cloaker is just taking the advantage here that people fight on his terms and not vice versa. And why? Because he can stay cloaked while going shopping or watching the LOTR Extended Edtion.

The worst result is - but best success for the cloaker - that your leadership is pissed about the "stupid" losses and start to blame their people for it. But the fact is that it takes too much effort and waste of ingame time to protect your pocket against the 23.5/7 expected unexpected because you can't find out if he's active or not. Even trying to bait is not working from my experience because we are facing not a stupid noob but someone who's exactly knowing what, when and how to do. And again: he's not under pressure to get a kill at all costs. This cloaky alt is just delivering another mini-profession and some random fun in EVE while pointing and laughing at a whole alliance (and their stupid losses).

I see just one logical solution for a fair balance here: the option to probe it down what is just possible with special probes, skills and some fair effort, patience and time investment in case the cloaked ship is really staying afk at a spot. Now some people would say: if it moves cloaked it's impossible. Well, it's not, if you align from the first hit to the second one.

Just the threat to get probed will force the cloaker at the end to get safe: "You will not play then dock up or log."

Amazing... all this blabber and not one mention of the possibility of someone using one of these 'juicy PvE targets' as bait to catch the aggressor.

Certainly must have been an oversight... surely you don't think null sec systems should be 100% easy to hold with no need to ever do any sort of PvP defending it.

And yeah... you're breaking wormhole intel. Also bad.

What system are you in? I can send a cloakie alt over right away to help you trap this guy.

Read again:

"Even trying to bait is not working from my experience because we are facing not a stupid noob but someone who's exactly knowing what, when and how to do."

It's a total different situation if an afk cloaker is hanging around for weeks in one system or you have to fight an incoming hostile fleet. Again: the use of afk cloaking is not to fight the PvP ships, it's to catch the weak PvE ships. You can bring 200 pilots and bubble the gates. But for how long? Waste of time and fleet because the afk cloaker is not caring any minute and keeps on playing with his main and waits for the timezone where your defence is low and some want to make ISK.

One of my alts is flying a cloak recon for ages and is exactly doing a similar thing. Sitting cloaked in a hostile system, probe out mission runners and try to catch them. I know exactly what I am talking about and how weak and pissed these mission runners are. Their PvP fleets tried to bait me several times but I had all the time the advantage because I just can ignore this alt till everyone is gone and some try to fly missions again or simply keep logged.

Ignoring the thread, which seems to be full of the usual angst and petty squabbling - might I suggest that the next thread be something along the lines of, "CCP, we need tools to combat cloaking."

This current title suggests you want them to do it all for you.

The OP was way too obvious.

1/10 and only that due to the few posts made.

i'm commenting solely on a sidetracked point of view. Ive recently been discussing an AP change, and pretty much most to everyone who disagreed with the idea (and some of you are apart of this thread also), only were saying the reason AP warps to 15 is to discourage afk'ers. but its apparent in this thread that people just want to be able to play the way they have been comfortable playing. ive read one of the similar threads about a module that would be able to track cloackies, and he went indepth to how it could be used so that, active cloakers could avoid detection, where as afk'ers would be locked down and decloacked withing 30 mins or so. not sure where the thread is, maybe someone else remembers the suggestion?

I do agree however with the suggestion of just removing local. but as long as that is not happening lets look for options to increase tactics involved with cloaking.

(I am determined to fight greifers that claim to know everything about this game, but really only want to manipulate the game to their favor.)

So, if you can take control of the stations, and eliminate all non-friendly POS's in system, AND hunt down all cloakers in system... you can essentially make a system COMPLETELY safe? But... this is a nullsec system right? Why should CCP create mechanics so you can make a system COMPLETELY Safe? How could you possible think you should be able to remove all potential threats from a nullsec system??!!

I think afk cloakers are incredibly important to insuring you can NOT make a system completely safe... And until you introduce another mechanic that insures you may always be subjected to a potential threat, decloaking probes just aren't acceptable. Continual risk is a major part of living in Nullsec. If you can't handle that, then you should NOT be living there.

I've ratted, plexed, and mission run many times systems with afk cloakers. They are not hard to deal with in ratting ships, although I bet its harder to cope with in a mining vessel. Here's a few tricks I know that make ratting with an neutral in system moderately safe:

Belt Ratting/Anomaly tips:
1.) Rat aligned. When you land in a belt, align to a celestial and then start shooting rats. If someone decloaks... you warp away!
2.) Don't Rat at zero. If you warp the the celestial at range, your much harder to set a drop on. To make this even more efficient, use a bookmark above or below the plane when warping at range. It also helps to not rat belts in a pattern.
3.) Rat in groups... Killing a single ship is easy... killing a group of ships is more difficult, especially if they stand their ground and shoot back. Cloaky ships typically have a weak tank, and 3-4 drakes will often make short work of them.
4.) Rat in budget fit ships... a t2 drake is 60m isk... losing one is small potatoes really... Not only that, a drake can rat alright AND fit tackle...

Other tips:
PvE in the system next door.... if they follow you... then they aren't afk!

Other thoughts include HTFU, adapt or GTFO, etc, etc, etc!!

No "suggestion" about it, hon, that's exactly what they want.

Once again, yet another nullsec "1337 PVP'ER!!!!1111!" proves just what a disgustingly over-entitled, drama-slinging, contemptibly spoiled and selfish--to the point of complete game-breakage--bunch of babies the whole bloody lot of them are.

Man, **** nullsec and the archetypical carebear parasites infesting it, OK--just...Mother of all Gods, just **** them.

^^This^^

Not empty-quotin'!